Purpose, Occasion, and Background
Key Themes and Outline: Malachi’s Sixfold Wake-up Call to Renewed Covenant Obedience
The Global Message of Malachi for Today
Introduction to Malachi
Timeline
Author and Date
The prophet Malachi (whose name means “my messenger”) probably lived at the same time as Ezra and Nehemiah, around 460 B.C.
Theme
Malachi’s fellow Israelites were guilty of corrupt worship and unethical behavior. He called the people to renewed covenant obedience.
Purpose, Occasion, and Background
Malachi’s ministry took place nearly a hundred years after the decree of Cyrus in 538 B.C., which ended the Babylonian captivity and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple (2 Chronicles 36:23). This was some 80 years after Haggai and Zechariah encouraged the rebuilding of the temple. Those two earlier prophets had said that the rebuilding of the temple would result in peace, prosperity, the conversion of people from other nations, and the return of God’s own glorious presence (see Haggai 2:1; Zechariah 1:16; Zechariah 2:1; Zechariah 8:1). To the discouraged people of Malachi’s day, these predictions must have seemed a cruel mockery. In contrast to the glowing promises, they faced economic difficulties due to drought and crop failure (Malachi 3:11). They remained an insignificant territory, no longer an independent nation and no longer ruled by a Davidic king. Worst of all, despite the promise of God’s presence, they experienced only spiritual decline.
The Setting of Malachi
c. 460 B.C.
Malachi likely prophesied several decades after the first Jewish exiles had returned from Babylon to Judea and had rebuilt the temple. Edomites had migrated northwest from their traditional homeland just south of Moab into the area immediately south of Judea, which was now called Idumea. Territory that once belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel had been divided into several minor provinces, including Samaria.
Malachi’s Sixfold Wake-up Call to Renewed Covenant Fidelity
| Disputation | Reference | Summary | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disputation 1 | Malachi 1:2 | Malachi defends God’s love for Israel. The proper response to his love is covenantal obedience and sincere worship. | Israel must remember the Law of Moses (Malachi 4:4). |
| Disputation 2 | Malachi 1:6 | Malachi exposes offenses related to worship and criticizes the priests for allowing them. | |
| Disputation 3 | Malachi 2:10 | Malachi condemns marriage to an unbeliever as unfaithfulness to Israel’s covenant with God. He also condemns unjust divorce as a violation of the marriage covenant between husband and wife, to which the Lord is witness. | |
| Disputation 4 | Malachi 2:17 | Malachi promises that God will demonstrate his justice. He will do so when “the messenger of the covenant” comes to judge the wicked and purify his people. | Israel must remember the promise of Elijah and the coming day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5). |
| Disputation 5 | Malachi 3:6 | Malachi returns to the subject of Israel’s wicked offerings. The difficulties the people are experiencing are punishment for their sin. | |
| Disputation 6 | Malachi 3:13 | Malachi assures the people that evildoers, who seem to escape divine justice, will be judged. The Lord will deliver his people. | |
| Summary | Malachi 4:4 | Malachi summarizes the main points of his prophecy: keep God’s law (the focus of disputes 1–3), and remember the promise of a coming prophet like Elijah and the coming day of the Lord (the focus of disputes 4–6). |
Key Themes and Outline: Malachi’s Sixfold Wake-up Call to Renewed Covenant Obedience
The book of Malachi 1:1 describes six disputations between God and Israel. There is a common pattern in each dispute: (Malachi 1:1) God charges his people with bad behavior; (Malachi 2:1) he then envisages the people’s response to the charge (“But you say”; Malachi 1:2, Malachi 1:6, Malachi 1:7, Malachi 1:13; Malachi 2:14, Malachi 2:17; Malachi 3:7, Malachi 3:8, Malachi 3:13); (Malachi 3:1) God then replies to their presumed response and expands the charge. The chart below shows the subject of each dispute and God’s response to it.
The Global Message of Malachi
“‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’” (Malachi 1:2). After the return from exile, the rebuilding of the temple, and the reinstitution of temple worship, Israel was looking around and wondering why they were still a marginalized, insignificant nation compared to the national powers of the day. What had become of God’s great promises to exalt Israel and punish the godless nations?
The global message of Malachi is that God’s judgment is indeed coming on his enemies, but God’s people must be more concerned about their own relationship to him than with anyone else’s fate. The global church must beware the dead orthodoxy that so easily sets in when church life becomes routine.
Malachi in Redemptive History
God’s promises. The long-threatened and well-deserved exile from the Promised Land had come and gone. A remnant had returned to Judah and had been eagerly expecting final restoration of all that God had promised them—supremacy among the nations, the coming of a final Messiah-king, judgment on the Gentile nations who had oppressed Israel so long, and lasting peace and prosperity. Above all, they were looking forward to the day when God himself would dwell among his people once more in glory (see Haggai 2:1; Zechariah 1:16; Zechariah 2:1; Zechariah 8:1).
Yet this was not the picture of life in Israel in Malachi’s day. Instead, the people were experiencing economic adversity, poor harvests, and pestilence (see Malachi 3:10). Where was the abundance promised and longed for?
God’s summons. Malachi’s answer is that God will not fail to fulfill what he has promised to his people, but the time is not yet ripe for such fulfillment. Instead, God calls the people to love him more than the abundance they have so long anticipated. Israel must learn once more what it is to trust the Lord, committing themselves again to the covenant into which God has entered with them. For it is by such covenant faithfulness that the nations will be gathered in. Then God’s “name will be great among the nations” (Malachi 1:11; compare Malachi 1:14). When Israel turns to love the Lord their God with all their heart, then the Gentiles will be attracted to such a life, such a people, and such a God.
God’s provision. Ultimately, however, God could not wait for such Israelite faithfulness to blossom, for it never did blossom and never could. If his people were to love him with all their heart, something more drastic was needed. Rather than waiting for his people to love him and in that way attract the nations, God would send his own Son, pouring out his Spirit onto his people and moving them from the inside out to walk in his ways as a witness to the nations of the world (Jeremiah 31:31; Ezekiel 36:22).
By sending his Son, moreover, God showed his people how the nations would be won—not by attracting them but by going to them (Galatians 4:4). With the coming of Christ the way by which his people are a light to the nations has been reversed. Disciples of Christ do not wait for the nations to come to them. Rather they determine, in sacrificial mission according to the pattern set by Christ’s own incarnation, to go to the nations (John 20:21).
Universal Themes in Malachi
The pervasive tendency toward spiritually empty religion. The key indictment against Israel is their hollow, formal, corner-cutting religion. Their sacrifices to God are manipulated so as to allow them to retain their best animals (Malachi 1:8); the spiritual leaders only pretend to honor the Lord (Malachi 2:1); marriage is taken lightly (Malachi 2:14); and tithes are withheld out of love of money (Malachi 3:6). Everywhere that the church presently thrives, believers must be vigilant against allowing dead orthodoxy to set in. A sign of such dead orthodoxy is when doctrinal truth is acknowledged (“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” [Malachi 2:10]) and yet love for one’s neighbor is neglected, which brings God’s judgment “against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 3:5).
The worldwide exaltation of God’s name. Amid his indictment of Israel’s sin, the Lord reiterates the global dimensions of the worship he deserves. “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations” (Malachi 1:11). “For I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations” (Malachi 1:14). In light of his people’s failure to be a light to the nations, God will bring “utter destruction” on “the great and awesome day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5). Yet this day will also be linked with the return of Elijah to turn the hearts of the people back to God, once and for all vindicating God’s great name and glory (see Matthew 17:12; Luke 1:17; John 13:32; John 17:1).
The Global Message of Malachi for Today
God’s people around the world today have been promised great and glorious things, just as God’s people of old had been. Yet like Israel upon returning from the exile, the glory for which we so eagerly wait remains perplexingly elusive as we live life under the sun in this fallen world. Sin and sickness, abuse and maligning, discouragement and setbacks—such is the lot of those who live in a diseased world. Indeed, some suffering is unique to followers of Christ (Acts 14:22; 2 Timothy 3:12).
Yet like the faithful remnant who determined to trust the Lord no matter what in Malachi’s day (Malachi 3:16), we too must cling to God and his promises regardless of what afflictions befall us—physically, politically, emotionally, relationally, culturally. The curse of the fall infects all aspects of life, yet the coming final restoration will likewise redeem all aspects of life. This restoration has already dawned in Christ and is guaranteed to all of God’s children, who enjoy the down payment of the Spirit in anticipation of the coming full liberation from sin and death (Romans 8:18; 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13).
Joy is secure. Glory awaits. Hope stands fast.